Propositional Language and the Power of Negation, or Kant and Descartes

Physicalism was unable to disqualify belief in free will because we seem to be able to reject inclinations if we deliberate them. This reasoning was first used by Aristotle and the Stoics to claim that adults capable of deliberation are responsible for actions they might have deliberated. The Stoics distinguished between understanding a thought and approving or rejecting it, and claimed that by our power of saying yes or no to a thought the ego becomes independent even of Zeus. Yet they shrank back from identifying this power with free will, as did Augustine. Descartes and Kant follow the same idea of judging as the Stoics, but Kant argues that the power of negation, which is the liberty of indifference, is not yet free will, claiming that we get the idea of free will only in our experience that there is a moral law demanding obedience that presupposes not only our power of negation but a power to positively obey morality. This seems implausible. For when we learn as children to deny and defy the commands of our parents, we learn to positively make up our mind and to positively obey or disobey morality. Hence, we should recognize the power of negation or liberty of indifference as the free will that morality presupposes. It is empirical and fits in with our everyday use of the concept of free will.